Italian Cream Cake Pops

I used to hate coconut. The flavor was alright, but the texture of shredded coconut just plain grossed me out. About 5 years ago I made myself “retry” all these foods I had been avoiding, and coconut slowly made it’s way back in to the mix. Coconut sometimes seems to be an integral part of eating paleo- who had any idea how many forms it could take? There’s cream, butter, flakes, milk, sugar, oil, and water. So maybe by eating paleo I was subconsciously pushed towards coconut. Either way, I have no problem with it now.

Liking coconut opened up several new cake flavors for me. My dad’s favorite has always been German Chocolate, unfortunately no one else enjoyed it. Coconut and pecans are two elements that some people just don’t like. Italian Cream Cake is like the vanilla sister to German Chocolate. Egg whites help make this light and fluffy cake, and then you load it up with coconut pecan frosting. I’ve made several Italian Cream cakes and cupcakes, but had yet to venture into Italian Cream cake pops. Until this week.

Italian Cream Cake

I used this Italian Cream Cake recipe to make the cake. Some people add pecans into the actual cake, however I still hold off on that due to texture. I add coconut to the cake, and save the pecans for the frosting. So when attacking these cake pops, I decided I didn’t want pecans in the actual cake pop mixture. I mixed the cake with coconut cream cheese frosting- sans pecans. You need very little frosting for these cake pops because the cake is so moist. I made a half batch of the cake (I only needed a small number of cake pops), and probably only used 1/2 cup of frosting. If you use too much, the cake balls will have a hard time holding their shape and you will have a more difficult time dipping them. I dipped them in vanilla candy melts and then sprinkled pecans pieces on top. We’re talking tiny pecan pieces. Let them harden and then you are good to go!